Niles Audio HDCTR, HDLRS manual Location, Concealing Speaker Wire in Existing Walls

Installation Fundamentals

Try to line the holes up perfectly, because it makes pulling the wire much easier. A good technique is to snap a chalk line across the face of the studs or against the bottom of the ceiling joists. Then work backward so that you can always see the holes you have already drilled. Paying careful attention to this will save you a lot of time later on!

Pulling the Cable

Pull the cable in sections (from the stereo to the volume control, from the volume control to the speaker). Start with the longest sections and use left-over wire to complete the short sections. If you plan to pull many rooms at the same time through a central route, walk off the dis- tance to each destination, add a generous fudge factor for turns and other obstacles, then cut off each section so that you have a bundle of wires you can pull at once.

Whenever you run the wire further than four and one half feet from a hole in a stud or joist (open attic space, going up walls, etc.), fasten the wire to the joists or studs using cable clamps or appropriately sized wire staples. The wire should not have large sags in it, nor should it be too tight. Try to protect the wire from being stepped on in attics or other unfinished crawl spaces. There are guard strips, raceways and conduits which can be used to protect the cable. Consult the local building code for special requirements in your area.

Concealing Speaker Wire

in Existing Walls

This is actually a fairly simple task if you restrict your choice of speaker locations and wire routes to the interior walls or ceilings of your home. Interior walls in almost all North American residences are hollow, so that it is easy to flush mount speakers into them and route new speaker cable around the house. What you see

when you look at the painted wall board, plaster, or paneling is only the skin of the wall. Behind the skin is the skeleton; two- by-four wood or metal “studs” running vertically from the floor to the ceiling in walls and two-by-six or larger “joists” run- ning horizontally in the ceilings and floors. In between the studs and the joists is the space for the wiring and plumbing of your home.

Exterior walls are different. They must insulate the house from the heat and cold outside, so they are stuffed with insulation. The national building code requires that the hollow wall space in exterior walls be broken by a horizontal stud placed between the vertical studs. This “fire blocking” makes it very difficult to retrofit long lengths of wire. In some areas of the country the exterior walls are constructed of solid masonry, and have no hollow space for speakers or wires.

Start by examining all the possible routes you might take to run the speaker wire from the speaker to the stereo. Use a stud sensor or other device to locate the inter- nal structure of the wall. You want to avoid all studs or joists. A typical route would be: from the speaker location up the inside of the wall to a new hole drilled into the top “plate” (horizontal two-by- four at the top of the inside of the wall), into the attic crawl space, and down another plate to the wall behind the stereo system itself (See Figure 9). The other very common route is through the bottom plate of the wall into an unfinished base- ment or crawl space.

Speaker

Location

Stereo

Figure 9 Location

Identify where all of your electrical, phone, and TV wiring is likely to be and plan to route around it all. You can acci- dentally induce 60 Hz hum on your speakers if you run your speaker wire right beside electrical wire for more than a few feet. Try to keep speaker wire running par- allel to power cables at least 3 feet away. To find exactly where an electrical cable is routed, try inspecting the inside of the wall by turning off the breaker for a particular power outlet or switch, removing the

Unobstructed space for speaker wiring

Figure 10

cover plate and switch or receptacle, and shining a penlight into the wall. If you have access to an attic or basement space you can quickly see which part of the wall space the wire is free of obstructions (See Figure 10).

When you don’t have access above or below the wall, try to estimate the existing wire and pipe locations from the positions of electrical outlets and plumbed fixtures on both sides of the wall. Take a look at the outside of your house too, sometimes conduit, vents or drain pipe will be visible that give useful information. Choose the route with the fewest potential obstacles.

If your house is built on a slab or you are wiring between two finished floors, look for baseboards which could be removed and replaced with the wire behind them. Doorjambs can be removed and often have enough space for speaker wire all the way around the door (See Figure 11).

Sometimes, an under-the-carpet run is possible (there are special flat speaker wires made for under-the-rug wire runs). As a last resort, heating and air condition- ing vents can be used as wire raceways for

Installation Fundamentals

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